I know I’m not the only one finding day 3 frustrating.
My current code for day 3 is here. I find the locations of all of the special symbols, check around them to get the numbers, and dedup the list of numbers I find. To make things easier to debug, I generated some supplementary text files. One shows the input I used, but with all of the numbers I used replaced with 'x’s: the output doesn’t suggest any problems with my code that are obvious. The other has each number that went into the sum on its own line. I checked a few of these numbers and they seemed correct, but there are too many to check by hand.
What could I be doing wrong? I’ve officially run out of ideas.
I originally used a Vec instead (so repeats are allowed) and my answer was still wrong. Whether or not the part numbers are supposed to be unique is something the problem didn’t specify.
Any given number has a set of “coordinates”. That exact number can’t be repeated, even if it’s surrounded by symbols. But that number might be elsewhere in the list.
edit:
here’s an example:
1.1 .## 2.3would give you a total of
7, because 1 and 1 are two different parts in the parts list. But the1in the top right is next two symbols, so you still only count it once. It’s just a single part! Think of them as parts rather than numbers. Each part is a different thing, even if they have the same name.I thought my
checked_coord_setalready made sure numbers next to more than one symbol were only counted once.If you’re already doing that and you’re deduping the list then you’re doing too much.